First Among Sequels

Joe Griffin reports from the second installment of the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival.

The line-up of the 2nd Jameson Dublin International Film Festival, which ran from the 12th to the 22nd of February, was packed to the point of masochism. Take for example Friday the 13th, its first full day. Chinese thriller Blind Shaft was followed by multi-award winning Polish drama Edi, and then Peter Bognonavich's The Cat's Meow clashed with Osama. The 8 o'clock-ish slot that day had both Monster and The Barbarian Invasions. If you're game, the roster of 3 or 4 films a day meant that you could have seen about 50 films. I saw 27. The festival, which is non competitive had 93 films on the schedule, five seminars (more on that later) and number of very impressive guests.

"The fundamental change was the extension of the festival from 8 to 11 days", said Michael Dwyer, the Festival Director. "We had the same core staff. The programme was 50% bigger. I got virtually every film we wanted. When I was refused a film I just took 'no' as an invite to ask again! The scale and scope broadened. One of the purposes was to take movies beyond the routine of going to the pictures every night. And one of the ways is to have a rich concentrated programme, which was varied [to include] shorts, documentaries and films from 40 different countries. The next key was having so many people representing their films. Guillermo Arriaga [who wrote 21 Grams] we had on his way to the BAFTAs and [The Station Agent director] Tom McCarthy on his way back! All of the Irish films had someone there to represent them."

One of the reasons Dwyer cites for the big selection of films is the fact that unlike many film festivals, this one is non-competitive. "Competition restricts so many things. Filmmakers [consequently] often don't want their films in the festivals. We also had no VIP areas, no black tie events." The wealth of selection and accessibility to the films and events threw down the gauntlet to Dublin's cinemagoers. I managed an average of three films a day, squeezing in four on some days. And even so, it broke my heart when fatigue or schedule conflicts prevented me from seeing even more.

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 97